The Words That Bind

It starts with someone who speaks with authority. He or she knows. Then there is usually a book or many books and many people who read books together and talk and believe what happened centuries ago or last week and take on the mantle of words and beliefs, theologies and ideologies, prayers and practices, stories, and heroes and villains, wisdom and foolishness, all to assert what one thinks and what the other thinks, the good ones and the bad ones, when, in fact, reality has nothing to do with any of it, which is not dependent upon words and assertions that give groups occasions to celebrate--all of which is good, except the massive dependence on the past and the fanciful projections onto the future, when what is going on now seems to be irrelevant. Is anything going on now? Is all this stuff true? Are you and I too stupid to put down the book, break through the time barrier and make our stands with who we are--now? Before anything in the past ever was and and the future left the calendar with nothing to do?

Experience trumps belief all the time. The trouble with beliefs is that they generate so much chatter, while experience wipes out time and brings you into an inexplicable silence in which there are no stories or groups or other possibilities than what you know and which you could never deny to yourself without compromising your sanity and integrity as a human being. But we all like our toys and play in the sand box, and that is good. For every grain of sand is testimony to the silence that frees you from time and having to adapt a set of words that do nothing more than say that you don't know.